Be Set Free

Summary

A talk on the parts of us that feel “bent over” by shame, fear, lies, suffering, and disappointment — and the God who has never stopped calling us into life. Reading from Luke 13 and the woman crippled for eighteen years, it shows that before Jesus asks anything of her, he sees her, calls her, and speaks to her, straightening what shame had bent. Through several stories of unexpected encounter, the talk argues that God’s love is the answer to every ache, and that one act of trust — in confession, in adoration, in simply looking up — is enough to begin.

Key Points

God Is Still Calling Your Name

• Even in the middle of a crowd, God calls each person in a way and a tone known to them alone.
• We get confused about why we matter and what life is for, but for Christ it has always been clear: each of us is his idea, and he has never stopped calling us into life — even now.
• The invitation is not to figure everything out, but to take one new step toward the God who is already looking at us.

The Woman Bent Over for Eighteen Years

• In Luke 13, Jesus is teaching in the synagogue when a woman appears who has been crippled by a spirit for eighteen years — bent over, unable to stand straight, able only to see the ground.
• She could not look up, look ahead, or look around, and may have been tempted to wonder whether the good news still applied to her condition.
• The talk reimagines her not as elderly and worn down by decades, but as someone young — a reminder of how early and how long people carry weight they were never meant to carry.

The Lies That Cripple Us

• Many of us drag along dark thoughts, hard memories, and lies that once seemed small and harmless: “I don’t have what it takes,” “I’m never quite enough,” “I’m a fraud,” “no one understands me.”
• These lies can be suggested to us, spoken over us, posted somewhere, or agreed to in a moment of sin or failure — and left unchallenged, they grow into a weight that bends us.
• Shame is described as “the enemy’s first language.” Even ordinary guilt — the healthy recognition that we’ve done something wrong — can be twisted into a claim on our identity: not “I did wrong” but “I am wrong.” The wounds and places where love was withheld are often where the lies grow loudest.

Jesus Sees, Calls, and Speaks

• Luke names three things Jesus does before he asks anything of the woman: he saw her, he called her, and he spoke to her.
• When Christ calls our name, the crippled parts of our hearts cannot stay the same.
• Jesus intervenes in our condition, not after it. When he laid hands on the woman she immediately straightened up and praised God — and he named it plainly: should not this woman, bound for eighteen years, be set free?
• The one step shame can never stop even the crippled from taking is trust in Jesus — because trust touches Christ.

God Keeps Calling — Even in the Worst

• Story after story shows God calling in the most ordinary and unlikely moments: a grocery-store worker who insisted “I don’t have a name,” reminded that God thought of him before his parents did; a young woman named Kirsten, outwardly successful but inwardly miserable over a childhood thought that “God doesn’t like you,” who asked for the Eucharist though she wasn’t even Catholic; a woman named Carla, who woke on a bathroom floor with a positive pregnancy test and heard, without praying perfectly, “You are invited to life.”
• We do not earn the call — the call is what qualifies us. Our very existence is evidence of our worthiness.

What Keeps You From Looking Up?

• The false hope that if we try hard enough, make the right choices, and stay in control, life will finally work out — but every accomplishment is followed by another benchmark, and nothing ever fully satisfies.
• What bends our gaze downward can be an interaction from eighteen years ago or eighteen minutes ago: squashed desires, disapproved dreams, interrupted innocence, mistreatment, or the conclusion that it’s “too late” or we’re “too far gone.”
• These are not places to run from; they are exactly the places Christ comes to.

Andrew’s Story

• Andrew, a tattooed man wary of religion, refused a medal and said he wanted nothing to do with faith because his Catholic mother had been cruel.
• Rather than giving up, the sister listened to his pain and told him the truth: “They did not know how to love you.” It is not right that people fail to love us the way God created us to be loved.
• Going with Christ does not promise a smooth life — the cross is real — but he brings meaning out of every misery. Resilience is not about how much we can handle, but how much we rely on the Risen One, who turns every setback into a new starting point. Andrew finally looked up and agreed that today could be a new day.

Surrender: Letting Go and Leaning In

• Every surrender has two parts: letting go and leaning in. Two places to practice it are named.
• Confession — where God releases us from lies and lets us drop the weight. He is not surprised by our sins, even the repeated ones; he died to untie us from them but waits on our permission. Sometimes the most courageous thing to confess is the sin we keep committing.
• Adoration — where Christ makes himself small enough in the Eucharist that we know we are enough in his eyes. One act of trust is worth more than a thousand fasts; the soul that surrenders becomes a cradle that carries Christ.

Prayer for Freedom

• The closing prayer turns to Jesus as the one who deemed us worthy of life and has good plans for today, tomorrow, and the day after.
• It asks the Holy Spirit to touch us so we can praise God in certainty and uncertainty alike, to fill us with courage to claim the call with confidence — because “your love is everything we need, and you are the answer to every ache.”
• Jesus did not call us into slavery or to be crippled by any spirit, but to live in freedom.

Notable Quotes

“There was a woman there who had been crippled by a spirit for eighteen years... Should not this woman... be set free from what has bound her?” — Luke 13:11-16

“One act of trust is more than a thousand fasts.” — attributed to Servant of God Dolindo Ruotolo